Marconi puffed on his pipe and stared out the window.
I said, “I mean, we absolutely cannot let that part get out, right? The fact that the zombies are undetectable until they’re biting your brain? That fact needs to die with the quarantine, otherwise it’s going to be a global lynch mob out there. Which means making sure none of them get out, even if innocents die in the process. I mean, it’s shitty, but that’s all we can do, err on the side of overkill. Right?”
Marconi said, “The sedative is running out. One of my infected patients woke up.”
I said, “Jesus. Really? Did you—”
“I’ve been talking to him all morning. He’s still strapped to his bed. I calmly explained to him the situation, and he asked me to leave the restraints on. He said it was the only responsible thing. What do you make of that?”
“I … I don’t know. But you can’t just leave him like—”
“You’re right. I can’t.”
“I mean it’s just a matter of time, right? Until he monsters out and kills who knows how many people?”
Marconi studied me.
Owen banged on the door again. Marconi said, “We’re coming.”
2 Hours, 30 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed
To Tightpants, aka Jimmy Dupree, John said, “So we know for sure now? They’re going to bomb it?”
Jimmy nodded. “You’re the one who was askin’ earlier about the innocent people inside quarantine.”
“Got a friend in there.”
“No, you don’t. What this is, with the bombs, is a mercy killing. Nothin’ more. You need to get that straight.”
Staring through the windshield at the fence down the street, John nodded.
Dupree said, “Don’t know if you heard the shots last night, but there was an outbreak, from the quarantine. Bunch of ’em found an old utility tunnel that the government, in its infinite wisdom, failed to spot on the blueprints. Few dozen tried to get out. Looked like some militia tried to stand their ground and got themselves torn to pieces in the process. Don’t got any idea how many zombies got out into the wild but I spent my night disposin’ of thirty bodies. There’ll be more, a lot more, if they don’t do somethin’ about that quarantine. It’s a bag of live snakes in a nursery. Well, word finally filtered in, from the feds at the perimeter. The bomb drops at noon. We just got to keep it secure until then, then this whole flippin’ nightmare will be over. And if noon comes and nothin’ happens, we’re gonna surround this place and pour bullets into that fence until nothin’ on the other side draws air.”
2 Hours, 25 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed
I couldn’t help but notice that Owen had the reds build up the fire. Looked like they had found some more wooden pallets somewhere. That shit really burned.
To Owen, I said, “You know what? I never got to sit down and write that note to my girlfriend. Marconi used up all my time. And all he did was give me a chili recipe. Do you want it?”
He didn’t answer. It was a beautiful morning, though some clouds were moving in. I could actually hear birds chirping somewhere. Birds don’t give a shit about the apocalypse any more than we’d care about some species of bird going extinct in the Amazon. Which had probably happened twice already this morning.
All of the reds were awake and standing around me. I looked back at the hospital entrance and saw a smattering of greens standing there. I glanced up at the roof, and there were the rest of them, lined up along the ledge and looking down.
From behind me, Marconi said, “Mr. Barber, I don’t know if you can hear the commotion on the other side of the fencing, but we do appear to have larger problems here.”
Owen said, “With all due respect, doc, I’m not a fuckin’ idiot. Those people are about to riot out there because they figured out this quarantine isn’t secure, thanks to last night’s breakout. And guess who we have to thank for that?”
“Killing David here will not assuage their panic. It will, in fact, accomplish nothing except to confirm their worst fears about us.”
“ATTENTION.”
Everybody turned toward the booming sound of a voice coming from a public address system.
“PLEASE MOVE A THOUSAND FEET AWAY FROM THE QUARANTINE FENCE. FOR YOUR SAFETY, PLEASE WITHDRAW FROM THE QUARANTINE PERIMETER TO A DISTANCE OF AT LEAST ONE THOUSAND FEET.”
2 Hours, 20 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed
John heard the PA system outside the fence announcing something he couldn’t quite make out from inside the truck. Warning the crowd away from the gates probably. He pulled the tow truck up through the quarantine crowd, gently knocking over a DO NOT CROSS BY ORDER OF REPER—HIGHLY INFECTIOUS—TRESSPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT sign. Beyond it were the four-foot-high concrete barricades. Beyond them was an unmanned jeep with a mounted gun that John assumed would shoot anyone who touched the fence. Beyond it, the fence itself. For all he knew, Dave could be no more than fifty feet away, on the other side of that chain link. A cheap pair of bolt cutters would get through it in two minutes. But it might as well be the center of the Earth. He needed a drink. They had a little over two hours until either the army incinerated this place, or the entire town went apeshit on it. Two-plus hours in which to accomplish … what?
The crowd was actually moving back, to his surprise, and then it dawned on him that the military was trying to get the rubberneckers out of the blast radius of whatever they were going to drop on this place. He wondered if he was close enough to be engulfed by whatever came streaking down from the sky. He threw the truck into park.
The PA system repeated its message. John lit one of his last two cigarettes. He twiddled with the levers on the console. He heard a humming from behind him and a shadow inched across the cab. Oh, hey, he’d figured out how to work the stupid ramp mechanism. It’d have been nice to have done that before he was forced to steal some guy’s tow truck, but that was how every single possible thing had gone so far in this situation. Just a little bit behind the curve, a little slow to figure out the right thing. Story of his fucking life.
John realized at the very least he needed to get this poor bastard’s tow truck out of the blast zone, and that leaving it here would be a major dick move considering he no longer needed it. John got out and climbed up onto the tilted truck bed, released the cable that secured the Caddie and got behind the wheel. He twisted the ignition and woke up the bear under the hood. He reversed off the truck bed, flattening out on the street below. Creedence loudly assured him that a bad moon was rising.
2 Hours, 15 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed
Marconi was trying to voice another objection, but Owen wasn’t listening—his eyes never left mine. He cut off Marconi in midsentence and said, “All these people in here. All those greens. And look, you got exactly one guy standing up for you. Look up, at all the greens up there, watchin’ this from the roof. Notice how none of them came down to advocate on your behalf? None of ’em are throwing themselves in front of you and sayin, ‘you take him, you got to take me, too!’ You know why? Because every single one of ’em knows you wouldn’t do it for them.”
2 Hours, 14 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed
John backed up in the Caddie, and kept backing up. Farther and farther down the street, the tow truck and its tilted bed shrinking in his windshield. He stopped. He thought.
He flicked his cigarette out of the window.
He buckled his seat belt.
2 Hours, 10 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed
Owen said, “Dude, this is going to be lost on you. But I need to say it. Because we are going to die, Wong. Don’t think I don’t understand that. I know the feds aren’t gonna let us outta this place. So let me say my bit. I have kept the order in this quarantine since the day the feds pussied out of here. All in all, I’d say it’s the best thing I ever done in my life. Maybe the only positive thing I’ve ever done. And that’s all right. Whether it’s bombs in here, or bein’ torn apart by the mob out there, I will stand before the good Lord and say that I held things together as long as I could. And my final act is to declare you guilty, for the deaths of thirty men and women, and the probable deaths of two hundred and seventy more. I find you guilty of committing the only real sin Jesus ever asked us not to commit: the sin of not giving a shit about anyone but yourself. Doc, step aside.”
From behind Owen, somebody said, “They’re having a block party out there. Listen.”
“What?”
“They’re playin’ music. Creedence.”
They were turning up the volume, too. “Bad Moon Rising” swelled in the distance, getting louder and louder. And under it was another sound, a terrible noise like a mechanical Chewbacca that fell into a rock-crushing machine.
At that moment, John’s Cadillac came soaring through the air.
It cleared the first fence and almost cleared the second—the rear tires caught the razor wire and started unspooling it from the top of the fence, trailing behind the falling Caddie like the streamers on a kite.
Everyone scattered. The grille of the Caddie plunged right into the middle of the bonfire, scattering smoke and flames and bones to the wind. The Cadillac finally bounced and jolted to a stop among a rain of burning human skulls.
The voice of John Fogerty garbled and died. The driver’s door opened and John flung himself out, clutching a sawed-off shotgun. He screamed, “DID SOMEBODY ORDER SOME FUCKING PRISON BREAK WITH A SIDE OF SHOTGUN?”
* TRANSCRIPT OF AN EXCHANGE BETWEEN UAV DRONE OPERATOR CAPTAIN SHANE MCINNIS (GUARDIAN) AND LIEUTENANT COLONEL LAWRENCE EAGELSON (YANKEE SEVEN-NINE) ON THE MORNING OF NOVEMBER 15TH, 09:55 HOURS *
Guardian: Be advised, a vehicle has breached the quarantine fence along the western side. I repeat, a vehicle, appears to be a civilian passenger car, has breached the fence.
Yankee Seven-Nine: Guardian, are you we looking at containment failure here?